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The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics is not actually a Nobel Prize. This is not one of the fields in which the Nobel prize was established and it is not administered by his foundation. The real title of the award is the "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" and the prize is awarded by the Riksbank (the Swedish Central Bank). The reason while many people think that this award is from the Nobel foundation is that the informal title is very close to the titles awarded from the foundation and the award is made at the same ceremony as the foundations awards.

The Nobel memorial prize has been controversial from its inception and several objections have been made to it. The first is that Economics is not really a "science" nor does it contribute to "human advancement" enough to make a distinction between Economics and other social sciences. A second objection is that there is an insufficient number of truly deserving economists. This objection has merit, but it may also reflect the fact that during the initial awards, the prize had many deserving economists. However, as is true in any award, after you award the big names in the field the award must go to lesser lights. A third objection to the award is that the awards committee has its own objectives and makes awards in order to focus light on some aspects of economics that may (or may not) deserve more attention. There is nothing quite like the Nobel Memorial Prize to focus attention on specific aspects of economics. The fields of Public Choice, Bounded Rationality, and New Institutionalism owe most of their current popularity to the Nobel Memorial Prize.

Now having taken a brief look at the nobel prize itself, let us take a look at the winners and why they won the prize.

1969
Ragnar Frisch
Jan Tinbergen
"for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes"

1970
Paul Samuelson
"for the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science"

1971
Simon Kuznets
"for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development"

1972
John Hicks
Kenneth Arrow
"for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory"

1973
Wassily Leontief
"for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic problems"

1974
Gunnar Mrydal
Friedrich A. von Hayek
"for their pioneering work on the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social, and institutional phenomena"

1975
Leonid V. Kantorovich
Tjalling C. Koopmans
"for their contributions to the theory of optimal allocations of resources"

1976
Milton Friedman
"for his achievements in the field of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy"

1977
Betrand Olin
James E. Mead
"for their path breaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements"

1978
Herbert A. Simon
"for his pioneering research into the decision making process within economic organizations"

1979
Theodore W. Shultz
W. Arthur Lewis
"for their pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries"

1980
Lawrence R. Klein
"for the creation of econometric models and the application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies"

1981
James Tobin
"for his analysis of financial markets and their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices"

1982
George J. Stigler
"for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets, and causes and effects of public regulation"

1983
Gerard Debreu
"for having incorporated new analytical methods into economic theory and for his rigorous reformation of the theory of general equilibrium"

1984
Richard Stone
"for having made fundamental contributions to the development of systems of national accounts and hence greatly improved the basis for empirical economic analysis"

1985
Franco Modigliani
"for his pioneering analysis of saving and of financial markets"

1986
James M. Buchanan
"for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for theory of economic and political decision-making"

1987
Robert M. Solow
"for his contributions to the theory of economic growth"

1988
Maurice Allais
"for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources"

1989
Trygve Haavelmo
"for his clarification of the probability theory foundations of econometrics and his analyses of simultaneous economic structures"

1990
Harry M. Markowitz
Merton H. Miller
William F. Sharpe
"for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics"

1991
Ronald H. Coase
"for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy"

1992
Gary S. Becker
"for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including non-market behavior"

1993
Robert W. Fogel
Douglass C. North
"for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change"

1994
John C. Harsanyi
John F. Nash
Reinhard Selton
"for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games"

1995
Robert E. Lucas
"for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic analysis and deepened our understanding of economic policy"

1996
James A. Mirless
William Vickery
"for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under incomplete information"

1997
Robert C. Merton
Myron S. Scholes
"for a new method to determine the value of derivatives"

1998
Armartya K. Sen
"for his contributions to welfare economics"

1999
Robert Mundell
"for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas"

2000
James J. Heckman
Daniel L. McFadden
"for their development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples and discrete choice"

2001
George A. Ackerlof
A. Michael Spence
Joseph E. Stiglitz
"for their analysis of markets with asymmetric information"

2002
Daniel Kahneman
"for having integrated insights from physchological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgement and decision making under uncertainty."
Vernon L. Smith
"for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative economic systems"

2003
Robert F. Engle III
"for methods of analyzingeconomic time series with time-varying voltility (ARCH)"
Clive W. J. Granger
for methods of analyzing economic time series with common trends (cointegration)."

2004
Finn E. Kydland
Edward C. Prescott
"for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles."

2005
Robert J, Aumann
Thomas C. Schelling
"for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game - theory analysis."

Nationalities of Laureates

American - 37
British - 8
Canadian - 2
Norwegian - 3
Swedish - 2
French - 1
Dutch - 1
Indian - 1
German - 1
Soviet Union - 1
Israel - 2
Some economists claim two or more nationalities so the number of nationalities and the number of winners do not equal each other.

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